a giggle of delight and awe
escapes my lips:
the tiniest of waves
was caught by my shutter
without my even knowing:
because my eye was too focused on the far-away sails.
magic can be found where you least expect it,
that is,
if you're not
too distracted
to
see.
there is much to adore about a pebbly beach
in the morning, late springtime
when the salty water is still
icy
and the crowds
are only the small and the brave
the sun and the breeze work in perfect balance
sifting pieces of smoothed ancient marble between your fingers and toes, you are oddly reassured of your complete and total insignificance.
Since I've done such a miserable job putting together my wonderful list of observations after my trip 'back home', I figured I'd break the blogging seal by posting my answers to one of those goofy get-to-know you emails that D.sorellina sent today. If she's got time to do this with a kid, a full time job, and a trip to visit the inlaws on her hands, the least I can do is respond. (Any of you who would like to play along can email me yours (tuttivabene@mac.com) or post in the comments or post on your own blog.) Those of you who don't care can move right along, nothing to see here...
1. WHAT TIME DID YOU GET UP THIS MORNING? 5:19 a.m.
2. DIAMONDS OR PEARLS? Neither ... really. interesting silver, mostly.
3. WHAT WAS THE LAST FILM YOU SAW AT CINEMA? Something in Italian; I went with my 75 year old next door neighbor about 2 years ago. I'm obviously not a movie person...
4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE TV SHOW? Right now, The Wire - we're watching it on DVD. TV show actually on tv now? We got into that stupid "Farmer Wants a Wife" reality show on CW, which I'm really ashamed to admit.
5. WHAT DO YOU USUALLY HAVE FOR BREAKFAST? cottage cheese and berries and coffee. (not that my butt is getting any smaller as a result.)
6. WHAT IS YOUR MIDDLE NAME? a secret
7. WHAT FOOD DO YOU DISLIKE? Bananas and Eggs. Ack.
8. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CD? Hymns of the 49th Parallel, kd lang or Dido, Life For Rent.
9. WHAT KIND OF CAR DO YOU DRIVE? White mini cooper convertible named Moxie.
10. FAVORITE SANDWICH ? ham and green olives on sourdough bread with provolone and olive oil.
11. WHAT CHARACTERISTIC DO YOU DESPISE THE MOST? self-importance / arrogance (there are a lot of people out there who could use a big ole' dose of "get OVER yourself!")
12.FAVORITE ITEM OF CLOTHING? yoga pants or my denim jacket.
13. IF YOU COULD GO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD ON VACATION, WHERE WOULD YOU GO? right now, Patagonia or Costa Rica or Croatia. But this changes all the time. Most days, I'd settle for a day off in my own backyard.
14. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR BATHROOM? smoky sage with ancient white tile.
15. FAVORITE BRAND OF CLOTHING? Lucy makes my yoga pants. A local company called Kokoon makes nice stretchy stuff that's super-flattering.
16. WHERE WOULD YOU RETIRE TO? Maybe Idaho. Or British Columbia somewhere in the rural places.
17. FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH? football
18. FURTHEST PLACE YOU ARE SENDING THIS? Italy
19. WHO DO YOU LEAST EXPECT TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? I have high expectations. ;>
20. PERSON YOU EXPECT TO SEND IT BACK FIRST: Unassuming Princess or Jillybean
21. FAVORITE SAYING: "sometimes you've just gotta love what is."
23. ARE YOU A MORNING OR NIGHT PERSON? by nature, a night person. Except this schedule we're on means I never get to see nights!
24. WHAT IS YOUR SHOE SIZE? 8.5
26. ANY NEW AND EXCITING NEWS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WITH US? Ummm, not really. Okay: our backyard landscape project is almost 1/2 done.
27. WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE? a podiatrist or an astronaut
28. HOW ARE YOU TODAY? distracted and unsettled
29. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CANDY? york peppermint patties
30. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FLOWER? hydrangea blossom
31. WHAT IS A DAY ON THE CALENDAR YOU ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO? July 10
32. WHAT IS YOUR FULL NAME? as far as you're concerned? Viaggiatore
33. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? crazy windstorms blowing my trees
34. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? apple and peanut butter
35. DO YOU WISH ON STARS? What kind of a person without a soul doesn't wish on stars, at least occasionally?
36. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? sea green or cerulean
37. HOW IS THE WEATHER RIGHT NOW? windy and cloudy
38. FAVORITE SOFT DRINK? i gave up soda. but I reeeeeally loved diet dr. pepper
39. FAVORITE RESTAURANT? al cacciatore, my wonderful little local place in Italy.
40. SIBLINGS? just the one: D.sorellina
41. FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR? Casimir Pulaski Day or New Year's Day.
42. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TOY AS A CHILD? a dollhouse that Santa brought for christmas and that had EVERY piece of furniture wrapped individually. Santa was veeery busy!
43. SUMMER OR WINTER? Neither. DEFINITELY fall!
44. HUGS OR KISSES? hugs, probably.
45. COFFEE OR TEA? coffee
46. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA? vanilla
47. DO YOU WANT YOUR FRIENDS TO E-MAIL YOU BACK? well sure why not?
48. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? maybe a week ago?
49. WHAT IS UNDER YOUR BED? old contact lenses that I take out at night and toss on the floor (lazy, lazy.)
50. WHO IS THE FRIEND YOU HAVE HAD THE LONGEST? N.Winkust
51. WHAT DID YOU DO LAST NIGHT? made chicken pasta salad for dinner and watched an episode of The Wire while storms crashed outside.
52. FAVORITE SMELL? hot sourdough bread or lilac blooms
53. WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? heights, deep open water, and dying alone
54. SALTY OR SWEET? Salty
55. HOW MANY KEYS ON YOUR RING? two
56. FAVORITE DAY OF THE WEEK? Sunday
57. HOW MANY TOWNS HAVE YOU LIVED IN? 9, I think.
58. DO YOU MAKE FRIENDS EASILY? Not really. I seem like a people - person but I'm really not.
59. HOW MANY WILL RESPOND? who knows...!
(APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE FOR THE WONKY FORMATTING and lack of paragraph spacing. I can't figure it out... )
I started my blogging ‘career’ (that word is used with my tongue HEAVILY pressed against my cheek!) more than three years ago as I began the process to move to Italy.
I never looked back, really, when I returned to the US last year. People ask me all the time if I ‘miss Italy’. Pieces of it, sure. The way that the sunshine there feels different beating down on my skin than anywhere else. The sound of voices and feet shuffling through the piazza at the hour of the ‘passeggiata’. The sad reality that really good traditional Tuscan food just doesn’t exist in the Twin Cities.
I’m waxing reminiscent because I’m typing this from an airplane enroute back to Italy. Back ‘home’? I don’t think that’s really a fair assessment … as much as I lived there, and as much as my soul felt at peace there, it was never truly my home. I was a steward of a gorgeous place for a time, and it took good care of me as much as I took good care of it. I left it, I’d like to think, a little bit better than I found it. It certainly left me a better person for the experience.
I’ve always considered myself a person of few, if any, regrets. But I do regret how I left Italy. It’s a story too complicated to give justice to in the retelling, but I had only two “windows” in which to leave: either at the end of January, or in June. June would have been too late (and would have meant that I would have toiled mightily through the brutal spring gardening season and not reaped the benefit through the glorious summer!) My visa issues were surmounting and there was a big part of me that feared if I did not leave in January that I wouldn’t have the courage to leap, to follow my heart and not my head.
Far too much drama was intertwined in the actual departure itself -- The Man of Many Nicknames made his first-ever nternational trip over to ‘bring me home’ (insert mighty glorious ‘big love gesture’ music here), but we got so caught up in the angst of the packing and leaving (2 years of accumulated stuff was far more than I had anticipated, and time became far too short far too quickly.) I didn’t anticipate what it would mean to me emotionally to be leaving, to be running TOWARDS a life that I was still uncertain about … and, well, to be candid, I didn’t handle it as well as I should have. (M.M.N. deserves a medal for not fleeing at that very moment: he had his own emotional baggage to carry and yet he focused on carrying mine. He is an amazing, magical soul: my guardian angel in so many ways.) The end of the story is that I didn’t know how to leave gracefully, and I couldn’t imagine calling attention to myself, and so I sort of snuck away under the cloak of darkness (actually it was the cloak of a rare Tuscan snowfall) – never saying a proper farewell to the assorted townspeople who had so kindly ‘adopted’ me, an overgrown cultural exchange student of sorts.
The Renaissance Artist was a saint, playing cleanup to my scattered and emotional departure. He made apologies, told the people who would spread the word that I had been called back to the US ‘for work’. I’m sure the small town shrugged their shoulders and went on about the business of life, but I felt … guilty.
The house sat empty, I’m sad to say, for the entire spring and summer. It is a house nearly 400 years old, and it’s had a fair share of ‘empty’ through that time; but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had abandoned it.
Building a life in the Twin Cities has been harder than I expected in some ways: learning to become part of a couple again – on the good days and on the uncertain days. Living in three different places in one year. Finding my way back to feeling confident about my surroundings. Creating a new job for myself; building a project from the ground up. It’s only now, 15 months later, that I can truly take a deep breath and step back and say, “okay, I made it.”
(It’s odd to realize that I reached that magical ‘zen’ point so much earlier in my Italian life. Perhaps with only one spirit to settle down, that point of equilibrium comes sooner.)
So I take my deep breath, just as M.M.N. is starting his ‘spring psychosis’ (so he'll only miss me during the few moments he's not working himself to the bone), and board a flight to Rome for 16 days of what feels like a pilgrimage. To make things right. To feel the sunshine on my skin. To sip prosecco with old friends. To hear the church bells in the countryside. To see the supernatural green of the tuscan hillsides in spring. To retrain my legs to walk on cobblestone hills. To be appreciative for the abundance of experience that it gave me. To say thank you to those ‘host families’ who adopted and nurtured my wandering spirit. To work and play and just BE for a while in the land that opened its generous spirit and adopted me when I ran away from Washington DC.
Can you go ‘home’ again? I’m not sure, but it will be interesting to discover. I’m immensely blessed to have a handful of friends who are welcoming my return with generous open arms: places to stay, car to borrow, ride from the airport, prosecco on ice waiting to toast the sunset. And I have no plans at all to see or do anything other than just BE there, in the sunshine. It’s the experience, not the ‘sights’. It’s the people, not the places. It’s the spirit, not the ‘stuff’. Upon receiving news of my trip, I received the most spirit-buoying message from Il Cavaliere, the man who without comparison was my knight in shining armor during my time there:
Bella tu sei!!!! Bene allora facciamo cosi, non decidiamo niente: puoi fare quello che vuoi, e faremo la vita di tutti i giorni, se dobbiamo lavorare lavoriamo se non abbiamo niente da fare andiamo a cazzeggiare. Non vedo l'ora che tu sia qui, mi sei mancata molto. Un bacio grandissimo
So that’s the size of it: I’m beautiful. We’ll make no plans. We will work when we need to work and play when we need to play. I have been missed, and I miss them too.
My gorgeous old farmhouse has new caretakers now … an American couple. I’ll stop by to visit, but I don’t think I can stay there; it will feel too strange to be a guest in what once was a sanctuary, my home. Maybe you really can’t go home again.
That's at LEAST the number of trees that are being killed to deliver shiny-papered advertisements to our mailbox.
I got a catalog from BERETTA (yes, THAT Beretta) today. God only knows how I ended up on that list.
And since I'm heavily cranky due to PMS and another SEVEN INCHES OF SNOW on the way, I was seriously tempted to shop with them ....
But instead, I jumped on www.catalogchoice.org -- a free account which lets me (quickly and easily) opt out of all the ridiculous catalogs that buy my name from lists. Country Curtains? Plow & Hearth? Pottery Barn Kids? And yes, you too, Beretta... Consider me officially opted-out. Nothing personal, but ...
Every little bit helps. Loookee me: Saving the planet, one-less-annoying-mailing at a time.
It's APRIL and we have 6" of snow in our yard today.
I'm back blogging again!
(only one of the above statements can be conclusively proven to be true.)
I've been wondering why I've been gone so long, really, when I love writing so darn much. The answer is that I love writing when there's lots of diversity in my life to stimulate me, with the potential - when carefully woven into a paragraph or two -- to perhaps be of interest to you: my friends, family, and random gathering of eyeballs out there on the internet machine.
And sadly, this winter provided a whole heck of a lot of sameness.
All you good mamas out there most certainly taught your kids "if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all" and I suppose that's been my struggle these last few months. There are only so many adjectives out there to describe insanity-inducing cold and depression-triggering darkness.
So let's fast forward, shall we, through the last few months of the Life Of Viaggiatore and the Man of Many Nicknames:
Damn it's cold!
Whew, it sure gets dark early in these northern parts.
Do we have enough firewood?
Fires aren't really environmentally friendly, are they?
How much do I NOT CARE about that issue right now? It's the only joy I can find in this weather.
Except for the snow fort the kids next door made, that's pretty cute.
New Year's Eve is TOTALLY overrated.
Did I say C O L D???
That damn homeless man who I tried to help was arrested out front of my house on an outstanding warrant and carrying a knife. Fuck me very much for trying to be a nice person. Stereotypes do exist for a reason.
The Packers made it to the NFC Championships and Dallas didn't? We should go to the game at Lambeau!
We should take out a second mortgage on the house, donate 2 organs, and pledge to name a child Brett in order to secure tickets to the game.
We should spend copious amounts of time and money building a sufficient cold-weather clothing wardrobe.
We should test said wardrobe at the Pond Hockey Tournament, played on our local lake, in MINUS FOURTEEN degree air temperatures.
Let's buy our friend a beer at 9 am to congratulate him on his team's win, and laugh at his old-man-winter frozen eyelashes.
Let's spend 6 hours standing on frozen concrete and sitting on metal benches watching (what we now know to be) Brett Favre's last game EVER in the NFL end in a heartbreaking interception in overtime.
A shrine should be built to the inventor of disposable chemical hand and feet warmers.
Have I mentioned that fingers and toes are the first things to go numb?
Hey! The car needs to be electrically stimulated to start.
Hey! The furnace doesn't seem to get the house over 53 degrees, is that bad?
Quit yer bitchin and throw another log on the fire.
Have your silk undergarments fused themselves to your skin, my love?
(Six weeks later): maybe there's someone who can fix this furnace thingy.
Fuck, who the hell CHOOSES to live here?
It's dark at FOUR. Which means, YAWN, bed at Eight sounds about right.
We're obviously 80 years old.
Heated seats should not be optional on automobiles. There should be a regulation about these things.
Ooooh! The groundhog saw his shadow, meaning only six more MONTHS of winter here in the Tundra.
Caucuses are insanely outdated processes, making the Italian political system seem sensible and organized.
Thank the sweet gods for this little thing called "Wine Delivery".
MMN: "honey, exactly how long will 10 cases of wine last us??"
"Long enough to be sipping patio wine outside, we pray in the name of Bacchus."
The Magnificent Magical Copper Pan from Montepulciano has made more than 30 batches of stew.
The writers strike makes the long painful winter even more excruciating.
Watching the squirrel gymnastics on the birdfeeder qualifies as high entertainment.
We have done 3 (or 4?) 1000+ piece puzzles since New Years.
My feet fit into nothing but sheepskin UGGS. My ass fits into nothing but tents.
In desperation, I am cajoled into joining a gym - a sure sign that I've given up on hiking and cycling weather ever arriving.
The Easter Bunny cannot get to our house because of the Good Friday Snowstorm.
We take down our Christmas greens (put up on Thanksgiving) on Easter and reflect on how we're not the last ones. It was too damn cold to do it any sooner.
and then ... The Thaw! It is magical! We hike outside for 2 days and worry not about the wetness and the muck. It IS a light at the end of the tunnel... the warmest day in FIVE MONTHS, hitting 50 degrees. I ... might ... survive.
And then, today. 
Six to eight mor
e inches, lasting for a lot longer than four hours. Old Man Winter must be on Viagra.
Consider yourself caught up. I've gotta throw another log on the fire. See you again when I see crocuses in the yard, which may be sometime in August at this rate.
Oh, I do LOVE me a new year. Can't you feel the crisp, shiny newness of it, all full of potential? Happy 2008 to the three of you who still have this page bookmarked. (Blind perseverance even when you are continually disappointed with no-new-postings is an admirable trait.)
I can't make any "I resolve to write more" resolutions, because I'd be setting us all up for failure and disappointment. But I can say that I've missed writing, a lot. I've missed you. (And you, and you too, the one lurking in the corner.) So you can interpret that as a good sign if you're the sign-reading type.
Holidays for me always leave me feeling vaguely ... unworthy. As if I do not measure up. I always want to be more thoughtful, more giving, more "together", more festive, more ... something ... than I am. I have not in many, many years succeeded in sending out real live Christmas cards, and I have a glow of jealous admiration for those of you who sent me sparkly pictures of your children and pets with smartly written and engaging letters, or those who baked and dropped sugary goodness by our house. Or those who got your act together to host a party, decorate a tree, go caroling. We suffered this year from a serious case of Premature Decoration: we got the outside of the house decorated with MUCH GUSTO and hundreds of feet of twinkle - lit balsam / cedar / pine roping the day after Thanksgiving, put together four spectacular outdoor spruce tip arrangements with winterberries and red huck and Eucalyptus.... and then, well, the snow came. And it got cold. And shopping overwhelmed me. And I got laryngitis. And M.M.N. hit the wall of one too many Christmas Carols playing over the loudspeaker at ye-ole-day-job, and I woke up one morning and said, "let's not put up a tree".
(It was just one more damn thing. And it was the 17th. And gee, isn't that the day before January?!?!)
And so, we celebrated Christmas morning gathered around the Christmas Chair, festively decorated for the occasion. And yet, even as the page has turned to 08, I still harbor just a twinge of shame that I couldn't even keep my act together long enough to put up my own Christmas tree. Yeah. I'm gonna have to let that go.
I do not have a terminal illness. I did not recently have my house burn down, nor did I make a stupid decision to get behind the wheel of a car after having one too many beverages and kill an innocent woman on New Year's Eve. I did not spend the better part of my holiday season in the hospital. I do not suffer from debilitating depression. I am gainfully employed in work I mostly enjoy and am mostly good at and I have never been homeless or arrested. I have always been warm and fed. All in all, I have a shitload of stuff to be thankful for. And so thankful, I am. And eager for what 2008 will bring.
The treeless holidays were spent in a blur generally composed of watching the snow, tossing logs on the fire and watching many men in skin tight pants toss around a small ball. There was much screaming at the flatscreen TV. To wit:
Man of Many Nicknames: "That was a sweet ass run!"
Viaggiatore: "Yeah!! So sweet it was made of candy. A candy ass run!!"
(we both burst out laughing).
Viaggiatore: "See?!?! This is why English is so hard to learn. Define for me the vast and dramatic difference between "sweet ass" and "candy ass"."
Man of Many Nicknames: "That's a whole blog entry, right there."
And indeed, it is. The first official entry of 2008, no less, which shall foreshadow the total randomness of thought that likely awaits you in the coming months.
Come along, won't you? And in the meantime, you can consider this your official invitation to the house-undecorating party, which will likely be hosted sometime in August when all this f***ing snow has melted.
It's FIVE degrees here this morning. With the wind chill, Minus Ten. Meteorologist man prancing about and crowing, 'it's the coldest morning in nine months!"
We had a GLORIOUS unseasonably warm November (so say the locals), so I am appreciative that apparently I was spared this inevitable wintry fate by a few Indian Summerlike weeks.
This morning, I went through what I'm sure will become an annual ritual: bidding a teary farewell to that last layer of summer skin, which has been steadily flaking itself off for 3 days now.
Dear Santa: my stocking will be hung by the chimney with care, and it would look great filled with copious quantities of lotions, salves, oils, and moisturizing washes. I am dubious as to whether there exists sufficient variety and quantity lubrication for me to survive a whole Tundric winter without turning into a leathery crackly old woman, but we will see...
Too often, we fall into the trap of dealing with what's in front of us... what's begging for our attention right this minute: at the door, on the phone, down the street.
Confusing proximity with priority is a dangerous trap. By controlling your proximity and periphery on a daily basis, you can manage the REAL priorities in your life. The get well card you need to send. The call to the friend that you've put off for too many weeks because of the "tyranny of the close and needy masquerading as urgent".
Out of sight, out of mind is an easy euphemism to blame... but in reality it's all too easy to believe that because something is nearby that it's then necessary. It's okay to skip the fundraiser 2 blocks over to carve out time to talk to the person 2000 miles away.
For too many weeks now, I've put off a PRIORITY relationship because my proximity was crammed with too much flotsam and jetsam, and I'm kicking myself. (UP, you know who you are!)
Life is lived one choice at a time, and I've made some really crappy ones. But tomorrow is a new day.
Can you? Would you? Could you? Save the date. Please come. Let's get together. You're invited. Coffee? Glass of wine? Let's do lunch.
Everytime someone says something like this to you, what they're saying is, "help feed me".
They're saying, "your presence feeds my spirit."
"keeping me busy helps me forget about my life"
"I need help"
"you make me feel better/distract me/remind me what I like about myself"
"I don't like to be alone"
"I can't feed myself"
Before long, you are eyeing a jam-packed calendar and debate whether or not you have time to shower today. Whether you can make it to the grocery store before or after that lunch. You cut out that trip to the gym so you can have time to pay the bills and write that charity fundraising letter. Wear that pair of underwear again, because the laundry didn't get into the dryer.
You cram a handful of popcorn in your mouth between projects and eat a mustard sandwich because that trip to the grocery store didn't materialize. Your eyes well up with tears when the copier jams or the phone rings.
You're exhausted and hungry. Your spirit is starving, your relationship is starving. You haven't fed YOURSELF in the longest time.
Once upon a time, it felt good to be included, needed, invited. Today, you know that it is a short trip from life-giving to life-sucking.
Life is a full buffet, and you're trying to subsist on the 'I should do that' oyster crackers while others go back for thirds and fourths. And you wonder why your energy is flagging.
Sometimes the kindest thing you can say is: "sorry, no, I can't."
"I have to leave now."
"That project will be here tomorrow."
"You'll have to find another way."
"What's the worst that could happen?"
Turn off the phone and computer.
Sit down in the quiet of your own life, and fix yourself a heaping plate of wellness.
Those who are simply feeding off your fleshy spiritual carcass will have to find another meal.
